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I usually just "open-up" in degrees with people. If I feel a "click" and "connection" with someone I may "open-up" a little more...Don't have too many "well-rounded" relationships where I can talk about anything and everything with someone...Usually my relationships are based on "limited interests" or "specialty topics." For example if I'm with my friend Carol we talk about our kids or current projects we're working on etc. (Most of the time anyway.)...But when I talk to my friend Elena on the phone (or see her in person) we talk about "everything under the sun!" (Feeling included!)
I am mostly closed. I have had a few friends I could share with off and on over the years, but for the most part, no one cares what I am thinking or feeling. I'm usually seen as the strong one that people want to help them, and I do fill that role. There has never been any one for me to lean on, though, except for professional help.
LOL, a few weeks ago I was thinking of approaching my priest and talking to him about something, and then I found that one of the other parishioners had come across him in the library at the church, broken down in tears himself feeling as though he was useless and that no one cared about him. And besides being a priest, he is a psychoanalyst and gives therapy to other priests.
That just hammered home that I am on my own. I am going to look for a new shrink.
When its stuff that doesn't matter, I'll talk to people for a short while. But boring is boring. I'm very much a loner/introvert and have major trust issues so I'll do the brief chat, but not much else unless there is really something to feel. My interests are unusual and diverse, and when I find a match can literally talk for hours, but if it feels like blah blah blah...
I was very shy as a kid, and think this was part of it then, too, since I picked both friends and acquaintences very very carefully, and was likely holded up reading a book over other stuff. For me good conversation (where both of us enjoy... I can tell if someone is just 'bluffing') and dullsville is better spent some other way.
I think I come off sort of wierd to most people but don't consider it a problem. I wish more people would just BE themselves and not pretent to be interested or making dull conversation as a duty to be 'nice'.
Yeah, I've kind of learned to embrace being weird instead of fighting it. I'm weird. Get over it, people.
I am mostly closed. I have had a few friends I could share with off and on over the years, but for the most part, no one cares what I am thinking or feeling. I'm usually seen as the strong one that people want to help them, and I do fill that role. There has never been any one for me to lean on, though, except for professional help.
LOL, a few weeks ago I was thinking of approaching my priest and talking to him about something, and then I found that one of the other parishioners had come across him in the library at the church, broken down in tears himself feeling as though he was useless and that no one cared about him. And besides being a priest, he is a psychoanalyst and gives therapy to other priests.
That just hammered home that I am on my own. I am going to look for a new shrink.
Speaking from experience, I'll never open up to a pastor, priest, or whatever again. Yes, they are only human, but danged if one didn't proposition me.
The few pastors that I've had contact with have a wall around them; they won't trust people. They are on guard. I couldn't blame them. They've had more experience with folks than I'd EVER desire. One must be a strong person to deal with people, and definitely guarded.
I can relate! I've always been viewed as the "strong one" too. (The "rock!") But ha ha! This isn't always the case. I have my "breakdown moments" too!...One of my cousins is a "renouned" priest in the Mid-West. (And a licensed therapist.)...But he can't get past viewing me as the "strong one" too. We don't talk very often but when we do he treats me more like a colleague. He just can't imagine that I ever neeed to be "rescued" even if I tell him in graphic detail about a recent "breakdown episode."...I guess it's good that he has confidence in me. Maybe he feels this way because I tend to sprinkle my stories with humor. By the time I talk to him I have usually done my own "processing." He didn't see me "struggling" and all "in pieces."
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